Linux gets Defense deal

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Feb 15, 2006 | by Brice Wallace Deseret Morning News

BLUFFDALE -- Linux Networx' business is supercomputers. Now it has a supersize order placed by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The company said this week that the department's order, the company's biggest, includes two of what are expected to be among the top 20 most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

The department's five-supercomputer order includes three Advanced Technology Clusters and one LS-1 for the Army Research Laboratory's Major Shared Resource Center, plus an additional LS-1 for the Dugway Proving Ground.

The MSRC's computing capability will be boosted to more than 80 trillion floating-point operations, making it one of the largest computing centers in the Defense Department. The three ATCs will be installed this summer, with two expected to be ranked in the top 20 of the world's most powerful computer systems.

The LS-1 for the center also will be deployed this summer. It will be the first scientific visualization supercomputer in the Defense Department's High Performance Computing Modernization Program.

The company said details about the Dugway Proving Ground LS-1 system will be announced later this year.

The department is modernizing its high-performance computing capabilities, and the High Performance Computing Modernization Program is providing the supercomputer services, high-speed network communications and computational science expertise that enable the Defense laboratories, including the Army Research Laboratory, to conduct focused research, development and testing.

In a prepared statement, Charles J. Nietubicz, director of the ARL MSRC and director of the High Performance Computing Division in the Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, said increases in computing capability will help Defense scientists and engineers solve more complex problems in a time frame that can provide the data needed to help with weapon development and procurement decisions.

"We are honored to partner with the DoD on this key technology project," Robert "Bo" H. Ewald, chief executive officer of Linux Networx, said in a prepared statement. "This procurement features our Linux Supercomputers powering a broad set of applications to solve a number of complex challenges -- leveraging a variety of visualization capabilities within the DoD and within the defense community special programs."

In a separate announcement Monday, Linux Networx said it had record orders and growth during 2005, achieving three straight quarters of record growth in orders. It finished the year with a bookings backlog that was three times larger than it was in 2004.

Linux Networx has delivered more than 450 supercomputing "clusters" to more than 165 customers worldwide.

E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com